Wow... People are really good at screaming terrible and sticking their fingers in their ears. I'm glad more people on the Commander/EDH forums get it because they know the format, but still so many people are crying about how 'bad' this card is...

This is a POLITICS card almost always. You all shout I'm never going to pay for this, but the point of the card is for it to be used when the caster knows your going to want to pay for it. The caster doesn't cast it when he gets most advantage out of it, that ensures minimum impact. He casts it when the person who gets most out of it is in no position to attack him, whether it be an alliance of some sort, a bigger threat being on the table, or a hissing miasma effect. You play this to unbalance the table and give everyone the weapon to kill the guy making a target of himself.

Everybody who doesn't invest mana into this is a target for the 2-3 people who just did. This is called weeding out people who play counter magic. And if this does get countered, you ruined the possibility of having a nice card resolve. All about weeding out player who don't want to play nice.

I hadn't thought of that when I first saw the card. I had seen it as more of a group hug card, and was most likely gonna leave it on the sidelines, but that seems like so much fun. I've always loved making a common enemy of the guy who doesn't play nice. This is so going in my mono-white deck.

Wow... People are really good at screaming terrible and sticking their fingers in their ears. I'm glad more people on the Commander/EDH forums get it because they know the format, but still so many people are crying about how 'bad' this card is...

This is a POLITICS card almost always. You all shout I'm never going to pay for this, but the point of the card is for it to be used when the caster knows your going to want to pay for it. The caster doesn't cast it when he gets most advantage out of it, that ensures minimum impact. He casts it when the person who gets most out of it is in no position to attack him, whether it be an alliance of some sort, a bigger threat being on the table, or a hissing miasma effect. You play this to unbalance the table and give everyone the weapon to kill the guy making a target of himself.

There is the niche of soul sisters or soldier tribal that gets this as well... But they're already happy with this and I don't need to talk about them.

I think that a lot of the crying you may be hearing on "other" forums and sites are often in regards to people who either focus on duels, play aggro-win decks or just don't understand that in multiplayer, sometimes other people who have more stuff makes them more primary targets. It also probably has something to do with the online magic "access to all cards in the game" strategy that I have seen here and there.

Sometimes, simple and interesting is way better approach to the game than hard win cards.

In chaos and 1v1 commander games, I don't see myself paying anything for an Alliance of Arms that my opponent casts unless I have some ways of breaking the symmetry. Doesn't seem that good. However, the card and the join forces mechanic both excite me for team games.

Also, the Join Forces mechanic does not need to be completely symmetrical.

How about:Alliance of Arms1WWSorceryJoin Forces - Starting with you, each player may pay any amount of mana. Each player who paid the highest amount of mana puts X 1/1 Soldier tokens into play, where X is the total amount of mana paid.Put X 1/1 Soldier tokens into play.

edit: My version is probably too degenerate in a ramp deck where you make sure that no one else is going to be able to pay more than you, but the point stands: communal paying for mana does not mean everyone has to get the same thing out of that mana.

It's a political card, which is great. But, it's a political card with no control over who benefits, except by happenstance; the very person you're trying to negotiate others into defeating has the option of benefiting as well. This isn't Pheldaggrif, where you can selectively give someone bodies, or another person life, or cards. This is just creates an out-and-out soldierfest.

I don't imagine this card is going to really help someone politic, because it just gives everyone the same amount. If anything, everyone is ahead but you.

That said, it's worth a try, perhaps. And as has already been mentioned, Massacre Wurm is tight.

As someone who loves the politics of a 4 way commander game this card has appeal to me.It's certainly not the most powerful but it explores an area of design space that Wizards haven't spent much time in.

It's easy to see that the card on it's own is a liability so the question is how to make the effect work for you. Suture priest seems good but unless you're pumping vast amounts of mana into X all that's going to happen is you provoke everyone into attacking you with their new tokens. Massacre Wurm would be nice but it's likely you'll play Alliance then have to wait a whole turn to drop the Wurm. It's also a 1 trick pony. If your opponents know you're going to punish them for having the tokens they won't contribute to the spell. Soul Warden seems better, lots of life for you and soldiers for them.

My best suggestion for this currently is the Ghostly Prison / Norn's Annex route. You can sit back while everyone else throws tokens at each other then drop some anthems and go to town.